suppliers.

It is also apparent from the table that almost half of the commercial
importers (47.40%) import up to 5 products (items) from their major suppliers
compared to 41% of industrial importers. Further, it is revealed that above 35% of the
industrial importers import more than 10 items and overall around 58% of them
import more than five items.

The respondents were asked to provide the exact number of employees in their
organisation for classification purposes and these data were categorised using the
Australian Bureau of Statistics classification of business framework (Office of Small
Business, 1999). A firm is defined as ‘micro’ if it employs fewer than five workers,
‘small’ if it employs fewer than 20 workers and ‘medium’ if it has up to 199
employees in the operating business sector (Kotey and Slade, 2005). A firm that
employs above 200 employees is considered a large firm. Considering this
classification, Table 5.9 shows that two-thirds of the sample firms in the present study
(68%) were small and medium (SMEs) businesses. Another quarter is classified as
large (27%) and a small proportion (5.73%) are micro businesses. The median
number of employees of the respondent firms is 22. However, the median employees’
Md._Abu_Saleh_Thesis
number for industrial importing firms is higher than the2006
commercial importing firms
(150 compared to 15 respectively).

Table 5.3 shows the responding firms’ export and import status. The table precisely
shows how many participating importing firms are also involved with exporting.

Table 5.3
Firms’ Exporting Status and Import as Input of Export
Import Category No Export % of Total Import Form % of Total
Export Category Export Category
Commercial 122 32 20.80 28 18.18
Industrial 48 60 55.60 60 55.60
Total 170 92 35.10 88 33.60

It can be seen in Table 5.3 that around 18% of commercial importers were involved in
exporting compared to 56% of the industrial importers. It was also revealed that
among the 33 firms categorised as importing firms, 18 were involved in exporting
and the other 15 firms only engaged in both commercial and industrial importing for
local distribution and manufacturing.

100